


Laws of Motion

by SassSexandSmut



Series: Laws of Motion [1]
Category: NCIS, The Fall (TV 2013)
Genre: Canon? What Canon?, F/F, NCIS canon is irrelevant., Rare Pairings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-28
Updated: 2017-02-28
Packaged: 2018-09-27 11:11:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10017227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SassSexandSmut/pseuds/SassSexandSmut
Summary: Two sharply dressed women, a park bench, and a violin.





	

Newton's Laws of Motion:

1\. An object at rest will remain at rest.  
2\. An object in motion will remain in motion, unless acted upon by a net force.  
3\. An object's motion is in the direction of and proportional to the net force acting upon it.

* * *

 

The bench was an unseemly shade of grey, its boards chipped and legs rusted. Weeds poked through the sidewalk at its feet, and various young couples had inscribed their love into its wood. But after sundown, it was reborn, glowing beneath the street lamps and moonlight that varnished nightly.

Jenny had grown accustomed to the omnipresent bench, had in her mind marked the seat as her own. It aged with her—day to day, it remained unchanging, but as she acquired wrinkles and smile lines the bench acquired chips and splinters. So every night she worked late, drove to the grocery store on her way home and sometimes the liquor store, and across the street from men in polyester suits purchasing daily Merlot, the bench slept.

Today, though, the old bench presented an entirely new scene. The October wind nipping at her neck had kept couples off their evening strolls, and she’d left work considerably later. The moon cast a cold glow overhead, like a refrigerator light bulb on its last breaths, and DC had turned to a black and white photograph. The only colors in sight were neon street signs, the buzzing red letters marking the theater, the late night coffeehouse, the liquor store she’d just stepped out of.

Suddenly, Jenny felt old—not physically; no, she felt as though she’d been thrown back in time, to a darker city on a grittier day. She felt less crisp; her sharp haircut felt out of place. October always brought with it the taint of old noir. Something about the cold, windy nights allowed history to encroach on present DC. Jenny didn’t object to it, as long as it went away in time of the holidays.

The centerpiece of the scene was a petite woman in a trenchcoat, her breath turning to fog beneath the streetlight, a violin nestled in the crook of her neck. She was sharp-faced, severe in the misaligned way Jenny was not. Her blonde hair was loose over her shoulders, her face freckled and weathered. She was perfectly crooked, as if mid-October had manifested in a human body. She played a haunting tune in a minor key.

Jenny stalked across the empty street, her head cocked curiously. “Evening, Stella," she said with a wan smile. "I didn't know you played."

Stella put down her violin. “No rest for the wicked,” she quipped with a rolling British lilt.

“Very Sherlock Holmes of you."

Stella’s eyes drifted to the hotel a block away. “I didn’t want to disturb my neighbors.”

Jenny sat down on the old bench, and it creaked dangerously. “It’s been awhile,” she said softly.

“Yes,” said Stella, “I suppose it has.”

 ~

_“You seem lost. First time in London?” A young blonde dropped onto the stool next to her. “I’ll have a Scotch,” she called to the bartender._

_Jenny shook her head. “No. Just tired.” She didn’t talk to strangers, not normally._

_The woman held out her hand. “DCI Stella Gibson.”_

_“Special Agent Jennifer Shepard,” she replied, arching her eyebrow. She had never felt underdressed before this moment, staring at DCI Gibson’s silk blouse and five inch heels. Buttoned up, hair pinned tightly to the back of her head, Jenny felt distinctly uncomfortable. She felt like she was lying—she was certainly not the perfect professional pin-up she portrayed herself to be in front of her superiors. But that was the price of ambition in DC. It was a small price to pay._

_“FBI?” Stella asked, tucking an icy blonde curl behind her ear._

_Jenny shook her head, taking a sip of her beer. “NCIS.”_

_A small noise of surprise escaped Stella’s lips. NCIS didn’t likely turn up in a London pub every night._

 ~

“I was surprised to hear your name when the FBI said they’d brought in a consultant in the Lacy Brown case,” Jenny confessed.

“Unfortunately…” Stella hummed, trailing into silence. Her voice dropped darkly. “Your country isn’t very good at catching sexual predators.”

Jenny snorted. “No shit.” Then her expression grew solemn as the implications of Stella’s words sank in. “No, we're not,” she mused. “I wish that could change.”

Stella cocked her head. “Then change it. You’re the director of NCIS now.” She paused. “First female director of an armed federal agency. That’s quite something, Jennifer.”

~ 

_“We’ve never had a female director,” admitted Jenny with a grim chuckle. She took a swig of her beer. “Men see female ambition as an affront to their masculinity. It’s a shame, but I guess it leaves the title to me one day.”_

_Stella cocked her eyebrow. “Going to claw your way through the ranks of misogyny and militarism?”_

_Jenny nodded staunchly. “Yep. Prove them all wrong.”_

_“What to do then?”_

_She shrugged. “Shift our outlook on national security. Advocate for all the women in government jobs who don’t get their due. I’ve got the kinds of ideas that only work if implemented in a high place.”_

 ~

Jenny sighed wistfully. “It’s something,” she said, “but it’s not all I hoped. I have to demand the kind of formal respect from my agents that my predecessors didn’t. Don’t get me wrong; I’m trying to change the system, but I didn’t expect so much condescension on the political end.”

Stella pursed her lips. “I felt the same condescension when I was promoted to Detective Superintendent. I know that most of my female colleagues have felt the same. It breeds isolation, anxiety, overwhelming pressure.”

Jenny was no stranger to those demons, all burdens she’d born since college. Perhaps even longer, if she willed herself to remember.

“Is that why you brought the violin?” she asked, eyeing the sleek, russet violin on Stella’s lap.

The detective shook her head. She looked older in the moonlight, her profile more defined. Like she was slowly, constantly falling from grace and was happy of it. Jenny would be happy of it too. Grace was overrated.

 ~

_“Come back to my flat, Special Agent Jennifer Shepard.”_

_The offer was forward, tempting, and hardly a surprise. Stella Gibson sat with her legs spread in dark slacks and her elbows in her lap. She smelled of mahogany, roses, and hard liquor; her voice carried a swagger. There was a confidence about her demeanor that Jenny found quite irresistible._ _She’d always been drawn to the strong, taciturn John Wayne types, the weathered cowboy types who sought justice and spoke everything deliberately. But a man didn’t always understand the fine distinctions between strength and hyper-masculinity, handsome chivalry and condescending chauvinism. Stella Gibson saw the line clear as day._

_Jenny glanced at her watch. She didn’t have to report until 8:00 the next morning._

_“Come to my hotel room?” she suggested with a curve of her cherry red lips._

_Stella cocked her head, and in the dim light, Jenny noticed freckles adorning her aquiline nose and angular cheeks. They fit, somehow._

_“All right, Jennifer.” Stella waved the bartender over and paid her tab. “Lead on.”_

 ~

“What were you playing?” Jenny asked. “On the violin, I mean.”

Stella shrugged. “I haven’t the slightest clue. I learned it as a child.”

“It sounds melancholy.”

“So does every piece on the violin.” Stella smiled thinly, her eyes pale in the moonlight.

 ~

_“You have owl’s eyes,” A cold blue-grey, round and wise and curious. Jenny could hold her liquor with eloquence, but it came at the expense of thinking before she spoke._

_“Do I?” Stella murmured, and Jenny couldn’t tell whether she was flattered or taken aback._

 ~

Stella put the violin aside and leaned her elbows on her knees. Jenny ran her fingers through newly cropped copper hair. Sharply dressed, still but for the wind, they became statues to the rare passerby. Their hair and sleeves ruffled discreetly, their eyes drifted about, but their bodies clung to the bench as if they were drowning, and the bench’s rotting wood was the life raft the city had thrown to them.

The moon vanished behind a blanket of thickening clouds that roiled and danced within themselves. Jenny had always been fond of cloudy nights. “When you said we should see each other again, this wasn’t what I expected,” she said, pulling her coat tighter over her shoulders.

“Well I didn’t _expect_ to see you again,” replied Stella softly. “I didn’t expect I would _want_ to see you again. But you rather intrigued me.”

“I’d ask if it was the sex or the wit, but I’m not certain I want to know the answer.”

“Well,” Stella chuckled, “it was very good sex.”

 ~

_She pulled apart the buttons on Stella’s blouse, careful not to rip the thin material. They were alike, she noted, in their tastes for lingerie. Their personal elegance, for no satisfaction but their own. Stella’s lips captured hers; Stella’s tongue grazed her teeth. She reached for the clasp on the detective’s elaborate bra and pulled it off._

_Jenny rested her hands on Stella’s hips, still in slacks, and broke the kiss for air. Her bare back pressed against the wall of her hotel room, and she could hear, far below her, swing playing from a shop on the street. Not the usual, energetic swing, but the slow, sultry blues._

_She’d once been told that she had the voice of a jazz singer. It wasn’t true; Jenny couldn’t sing to save her life. But in this moment, a throaty moan escaping her lips, she understood the remark. She and Stella Gibson, they spoke with a common thread, a roughness that only came with trials and vices._  
_Stella’s fingers found the edge of her skirt, and a shiver danced up her spine as they slipped inside. She bumped against the detective’s nose, clumsily searching for her lips, eventually giving up and kissing her way to the hollow of Stella’s collarbone._

_Stella’s hands pushed up her skirt, tugged her to the queen bed, with few formalities found their way to her aching center. The muffled swing music rippled in and out of her hearing, as if she were miles beneath the ocean surface. As if mermaids were femme fatales with record players and pistols and police titles._

~ 

“I wish we’d kept in better touch,” Jenny admitted, as a nearly empty restaurant across the street played Billboard’s Top 100. She liked Stella’s music better.

Stella closed her owl's eyes. “It’s nice to have someone scaling the mountain with you.”

“You’re quite a remarkable person, Detective-Superintendent Gibson.”

“As are you, Director Shepard.”

Jenny gathered her purse. “I should go,” she said flatly. She stood, as if to leave, then froze in place as Stella reached for her violin and bow. “Will you be here later?”

“I might play one more song. Clears the mind.”

“Come back with me.” Jenny turned around, catching Stella’s eye as she tuned the delicate instrument in her lap. Her lips spread inadvertently into a playful smirk. “Come away with me, Stella Gibson,” she teased as if the slight tremble in her voice was entirely undetectable. She was completely sober this time, and the words on her lips didn’t slip so easily as they had in London, years before. Stella’s eyes, she mused, would always startle her, as would the genuine admiration she had for this stern, mysterious detective perched on her rotting bench in October. 

Stella returned the smile like Peter Pan’s shadow and rose to her feet. “Perhaps my hotel room? It’s closer.”

**Author's Note:**

> I confess have a soft spot for Jenny Shepard, because I feel like after one great season she was mishandled by her writers. I also thought she and Stella Gibson would make one hell of a power couple. 
> 
> Find me on tumblr: poeticsandaliens.


End file.
